Today, Smallhythe Place is best known as the former home of the Victorian actress Ellen Terry and her daughter Edith ‘Edy’ Craig. Ellen acquired ‘The Farm’ and the neighbouring Elfwick and Forstal Fields in 1899, before buying the nearby Priests’ House and Yew Tree Cottage in 1914. The Priests’ House was Edy’s home, where she lived in a lifelong trio with her partners, the painter Clare ‘Tony’ Atwood and writer Christabel Marshall (also known as ‘Christopher St John’). Edy was an influential costume designer, producer, director, and suffragette, and Smallhythe at this time was a radical, creative space, visited by Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and Radclyffe Hall. After Ellen’s death in 1928, Edy turned the main house into a museum dedicated to her mother, and also transformed the late 17th-century Barn into a theatre: a role that it still performs today. Edy and her partners continued to live on the site until her death in 1947, after which the property was given into the care of the National Trust.
Echoes of this bohemian episode have come to light during our recent excavations, and in previous work on the site. In 2014, HB Archaeology and Conservation Ltd recorded the remains of an early 20th-century water pump located to the north of the main house. It would originally have been donkey-driven, but it was mechanised in the late 1920s, during which time Ellen Terry’s gardener’s initials were added to the concrete platform. Some of the finds from our recent investigations in the garden and in Forstal Field relate directly to Ellen and Edy’s occupancy. Trenches excavated next to the Priests’ House and at the western end of the field both uncovered dumps of late 19th- to early 20th-century rubbish, very similar in make-up to material that was recovered during Archaeology South-East’s work in 2006.
Together, they include flowerpots; fragments of porcelain and other ceramics including plates, cups, and saucers; pieces of marmalade jars and other containers; a decorated bit of bone, which may have formed part of a pen or a cosmetic tool; a toothbrush and toothpaste bottle; and a large collection of discarded glass bottles for drinks (including gin) and medicines. Our metal-detecting survey also produced a screw top from a tube of artist’s paint (associated with ‘Tony’ Atwood?), as well as a seal with a cameo, dating to c.1825 – could this have been bought as costume jewellery for the theatre and lost in the garden after a performance? Examining these artefacts gives us illuminating and intimate insights into the daily lives of the unconventional women who lived at Smallhythe in the early decades of the 20th century – a community vividly depicted in Atwood’s 1919 painting of the site.
Sharing cultural heritage